Quotes from Shirley Chisholm

A sales tax is the enemy of the poor person. It is the enemy of the elderly couple who live on fixed income. And it is the enemy of the everyday American consumer, poor or not. (From Voices of Multicultural America)

When morality comes up against profit, it's seldom profit that loses.

What we need in this country today is leadership which has the courage to call for income tax reform to put the burden where it must be placed, on those who can afford to pay. (From Voices of Multicultural America)

I do not exaggerate; key votes have been lost because members whose votes were being counted on were in the gym).

I'm finding all over America that people are sick and tired of the tweedle-dee dees and the tweedle-dee dums who constantly flip-flap from one side to another. People are interested in having candidates that are truthful.

America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take.

Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time... its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.

The fact is that a woman who aspires to be chairman of the board - or a member of the House - does so for exactly the same reasons as any man. Basically, these are that she thinks she can do the job, and she wants to try.

Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want?

There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.

I've always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black...men are men.

Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.

Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.

You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

Of my two 'handicaps' being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.

We must reject not only the stereotypes that others have of us but also those that we have of ourselves.

The liberals in the House strongly resemble liberals I have known through the last two decades in the civil rights conflict. When it comes time to show on which side they will be counted, they excuse themselves.

Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of society and the pre-scientific beliefs about psychology and physiology. It is time to sweep away these relics of the past and set further generations free of them.

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'

If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.

My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency.